Under La Manche

by Bill Winter

I guess we thought it would be exotic, crossing through the Channel Tunnel. Ominous, perhaps. Would we sense the weight of all that water cradled overhead? Would it be warm or cool deep in the earth? What if — what if — the unthinkable happened and there was a crack, a leak, a dribble of salt water that drip, drip, dripped into a stream, a torrent, and our untimely and gruesome deaths?

It turned out to be, of course, merely a long tunnel — just twenty minutes of dark. I fell asleep wondering how the ventilation worked and missed us emerging into France.